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Large districts of country had gone to waste, and cane-brakes and squalid morasses usurped the place of yellow harvest-fields.
It was broken up into narrow valleys, the habitable part of which bore no proportion to the huge wildernesses of forest, rocks, and precipices by which they were encircled, and which was, moreover, full of inextricable passes, morasses, and natural strengths, unknown to any but the inhabitants themselves, where a few men acquainted with the ground were capable, with ordinary address, of baffling the pursuit of numbers.
In the forest there it is unhealthy for whites, the trees grow so thickly that it is difficult to penetrate them, swamps and morasses lie in many places, and the air is thick and heavy. We shall not go down there until we need. When we must descend we shall find an abundance of maize, and fruits of all sorts.
Should it fall into the hands of the republic it would be impossible for the Spaniards to retain much longer the rich and important capital of all that country, the city of Groningen. Coeworden lay between two vast morasses, one of which the Bourtange swamp extended some thirty miles to the bay of the Dollart; while the other spread nearly as far in a westerly direction to the Zuyder Zee.
Philip II sent as many reënforcements as the dreadful importunity of his viceroy begged for. Fugitives whom their fatherland rejected sought a new country on the ocean, and turned to satisfy, on the ships of their enemy, the demon of vengeance and of want. Naval heroes were now formed out of corsairs, and a marine collected out of piratical vessels; and out of morasses arose a republic.
Land converted into water, and water into land, castles built upon the breast of rapid streams, rivers turned from their beds and taught new courses; the distant ocean driven across ancient bulwarks, mines dug below the sea, and canals made to percolate obscene morasses which the red hand of war, by the very act, converted into blooming gardens a mighty stream bridged and mastered in the very teeth of winter, floating ice-bergs, ocean-tides, and an alert and desperate foe, ever ready with fleets and armies and batteries such were the materials of which the great spectacle was composed; a spectacle which enchained the attention of Europe for seven months, and on the result of which, it was thought, depended the fate of all the Netherlands, and perhaps of all Christendom.
Though he might float down the stream in his boat he would be exposed continually to attacks from the Indians on its banks, and when ready to return he could not surmount the rapid current of the river in his boat, but would be compelled to traverse the winding banks, often through almost impenetrable forests and morasses.
As dread and the scarcity of inhabitants in the Bisayan Islands cause great ranges of the coast to be left unsettled, it is very easy for the Moros to find numerous lurking-places and strongholds whenever they are pressed, and their constant practice, in these cases, is to enter the rivers, ground their vessels, and hide them among the mangroves and thick foliage, and fly with their arms to the mountains, thus almost always laughing at the efforts of their opponents, who seldom venture to follow them into the thickets and morasses, where the musket is of no use and a single step cannot be taken with any security.
Now and then we passed long narrow strips of pebbly or sandy beach, whereon markets were improvised for selling fish, and the staple products of the respective communities. Then we passed broad swampy morasses, formed by the numerous streams which the mountains discharged, where the matete and papyrus flourished.
To increase in our pupils the capacity to receive discipline; to show them, through concrete example, over and over again, how persistence and effort and concentration bring results that are worth while; to choose from their own childish experiences the illustrations that will force this lesson home; to supplement, from the stories of great achievements, those illustrations which will inspire them to effort; to lead them to see that Peary conquering the Pole, or Wilbur Wright perfecting the aëroplane, or Morse struggling through long years of hopelessness and discouragement to give the world the electric telegraph, to show them that these men went through experiences differing only in degree and not in kind from those which characterize every achievement, no matter how small, so long as it is dominated by a unitary purpose; to make the inevitable sloughs of despond no less morasses, perhaps, but to make their conquest add a permanent increment to growth and development: this is the task of our drill work as I view it.
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